Renegade Star Origins Box Set

by J. N. Chaney

  Logan, annoyed, said, “Don’t be stupid, Baxter. I’m well aware that killing key hostages negates any deal the boss wants to make with the buyers.”

  The voice from in front told them, “Both of you shut up. Yeah, he’s probably awake. I seen this one before.” The voice came closer. “Saw him up on Taurus Station. He’s better in a fight than he looks. He’s not just a hostage either, he’s a Renegade in training. Treat him like an opponent.”

  “Can’t be all that good if he didn’t make you on Taurus,” sneered Baxter.

  I braced myself as I heard the downward inflection on that final word. The voice had moved in close and the disdain smacked of a petty vengeance. The kick to the stomach hit hard but was manageable. I coughed and spat for effect, then let my voice drawl. “Gods, I’m awake. Hell.”

  I kept my eyes closed and wiggled my legs and fingers. I was stiff but there were no pins and needles. If my suspicions were correct, I’d been moved several times and had been resting for less than an hour. From the verbal indications, I was one of several hostages, including the female from the Prime Lady. I took a breath and coughed again.

  The voice, which I assumed belonged to the leader of the attackers on Taurus station, loomed over me. “Yeah, you’re awake. And you’re going to stay that way. You wanna be a merc for hire? Make your cash moving people, cargo, living beyond the law? Well, you’re going to need to be a lot tougher than this. You and you, grab an arm.”

  There was a silence and then some shuffling.

  “I said now, godsdammit!”

  Logan signaled an affirmative. “Okay, I’m on it.”

  Baxter was more defiant. “Cool it, Wes. We’re moving.”

  I was hoisted up and dragged for a moment. The heat of the desert wind grew in intensity, stifling my breathing.

  “Walk!” Baxter commanded.

  I opened my eyes tentatively, wincing at the light, but I was forced to keep them open to navigate a set of boarding steps. They belonged to a hover transport designed for travel over sand or water.

  I was pushed forward into the skiff and tossed on the floor. I winced, more from the pain in my eyes than the rough handling. The cabin was small. Barely half the size of a typical quarters. Besides Logan and Baxter, there was Wes and a pilot. To my right was another hostage. I couldn’t see her face, but it was unmistakably the woman I had seen in the lobby of The Prime Lady. They must have brought her in when I’d been pretending to be asleep.

  The skiff took off, jostling everyone inside as it sped forward. Then the leader moved to a hatch in the floor and threw it open. The woman yelped and pushed herself back against the cabin wall as if she feared falling out the hole. She needn’t have worried.

  Wes marched over to me and dragged me to the hole, then he pushed my head through it. Below me, the ground slipped by in a blur—a fluid streak of red, pink, white, and yellow terrain. My face came uncomfortably close to the craggy rocks below, but if they thought I would scream or beg, they were sorely mistaken.

  The skiff was powerful and fast. Probably a cargo puller that dragged loads of materials from the outskirts to launching stations for export off-world.

  I was pulled back inside and dumped unceremoniously onto the floor of the skiff. Apparently, Wes had decided I wasn’t worth the trouble he might get into with his boss. One of the men, who I surmised to be Logan, fixed me with a threatening look. He was a stout fellow with broad shoulders to match his square jaw and brow, clearly paid for his intimidating presence and not his ability to improvise on the spot. The other man, Baxter, was holding a bag and stood with a competent look next to a pile of emergency supplies. A doctor, or a medic that was working in a back-alley capacity. A spasm ran up the left side of his face and he shook his head violently to the right to relieve it. Side effect of whatever substance addiction had put him in this line of work.

  Wes was scarred and ugly. Probably ugly before the scarring, which left his face an alternating pattern of discolored lines and too-tight skin. The way he postured, the string of yelling and cursing of underlings spoke of deep-set insecurities. I could use that to my advantage.

  He loomed above me and tried to get a rise out of me with superficial taunts. “What is it going to be, kid? You got the gumption for this work? You think you can handle yourself when it gets tough?”

  I studied his ruined face. All the scarring posed a problem because it masked some of the man’s physical responses. Still, the flint hard eyes and tight line of his mouth suggested he didn’t just want to mess with me. He needed to bait me. Like he had a score to settle. Another weakness I could exploit. Putting on a show that I was terrified, I scooted back against the cabin wall to hide my hands and worked to remove the bindings.

  It was easy to inject a minute tremble into my voice and crane my neck up to him with widened eyes, then pretend to find my courage. “Upset I got away from you at Taurus? Did Velio give you a reaming for that? Don’t take it too poorly. Looks like you found some competent help this time since you couldn’t pull it off alone.”

  He leaned down and glared, temper straining his words. “The Renegade got lucky on the station. Lucky for you, your mentor let you play coward. Don’t have the guts to get your hands dirty or don’t have the ability?”

  I needed a distraction. Time to sow some dissent in the ranks. “You want to talk about ability? So far, all I’ve seen is a guy who surrounds himself with incompetent, ineffective goons so he can look like the smart one. But you picked wrong this time.”

  His fist jerked out and caught me on the side of the head hard enough to leave my ears ringing.

  The move had been useless. Without anything sharp I couldn’t break free from the restraints. That meant I needed to push him a bit further until he untied me himself.

  I turned my head back up to him, feeling a trickle of blood from my lip. “See? If you let Logan hit me, I’d be back out. He’s obviously stronger than you.” I signaled to the right with a wave of my head. “And Baxter over there is smarter than you even when strung out. The pilot can at least maneuver the skiff. What does Velio even pay you for?”

  He looked at his team and let out a scoff. “I’m twice the mercenary of any of these idiots. Velio trusts me to get the job done. He doesn’t trust Logan to lace his boots. And Baxter would be blitzed out of his mind in some hole if I didn’t regulate his stash.”

  “I can see that. You really got the job done on Taurus. And you did such a good job telling your medic about me that he couldn’t give me a proper dose to keep me out. You’re a gem.”

  Baxter snickered.

  Wes shot him a look. He was puffing now, hyperventilating as he tried to control the rage.

  I looked toward Logan. “And Logan can at least tell a conscious person from an unconscious one. Does it hurt knowing you’re less observant than your muscle?”

  Logan snickered and that was the last straw. He pulled his gun and shoved it in my face. “This look like incompetence to you?”

  I smirked. “You shoot all your hostages? You took me alive and I’m supposed to believe you’ll shoot me?” I kept my eyes on his, rather than the gun. “Wow. It’s pretty easy to shoot someone who can’t fight back. And you call me a coward?”

  He pulled me to my feet, keeping the gun pressed against my cheek. “Maybe I don’t gotta keep everyone alive. Or maybe, smart guy, I just rough you up a bit? Give you a few broken bones. You won’t be dead, but you’ll sure as hell hurt.”

  Wes reached down in a flash and hauled me up, then spun me around and cut me free. I hadn’t seen a blade, but it wasn’t surprising that he had one. My wrists and hands ached from being in the same position for so long and I flexed them to work out the stiffness.

  The man holstered his gun, then cracked his knuckles like he was about to lay into me. “You’re gonna feel this beating,” he told me.

  I leaped forward at him, trying to grab his wrist before he had a chance to follow through with the threat. Unfortunately, I didn’t quite mo
ve fast enough, and he was able to get a single hit in, slamming his fist into my side. I went for the man’s holstered weapon, trying to pull it free, but he fought me on it and managed to shove me away. He withdrew the gun and raised it to me, but I was back on him now, my hand around his wrist.

  That was when the gun went off.

  In my peripheral I saw Logan clutch his stomach before sinking to the floor.

  Ignoring him, I pulled the gun free and staggered back, then leveled the weapon at Wes. “Turn this craft around and take us back to the city.”

  Logan sucked in air and cursed. From the position of his hands, the damage looked pretty bad, and blood seeped out of the wound, staining his shirt with red.

  “Baxter,” I said calmly, not taking my eyes off Wes. “See to your man.”

  The medic moved to cross behind his lead, but Wes had other plans. He grabbed Baxter with his left hand and shoved the twitchy addict at me as a distraction. I estimated his trajectory and easily stepped around the falling body. As I’d expected, that brief second was all that Wes needed to make an attempt at stealing the gun.

  I dropped it, freeing my hand up to secure his wrist. I twisted him and back, applying pressure at the elbow and shoulder as I pushed my fingers into a point on his wrist. I was hoping to cause enough pain to drop him.

  He bellowed and swore, then pretended to go limp. I saw through the ploy and increased the pressure until he tensed, before slumping. I dropped his arm and stepped over the fallen but uninjured Baxter. “Tend to Logan,” I insisted.

  The man had other plans. I’d only anticipated Wes’s moves but Baxter had picked up the gun and was pointing it in my direction. Well, near my direction. His addiction caused his hand to shake terribly, but that wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

  “Baxter? Wes is down,” I said in a soothing tone. “But Logan needs help. Just stay calm.”

  What happened next occurred over a matter of seconds, but it felt longer.

  The medic’s eyes went wide and wild and I knew my words hadn’t gotten through. He pulled the trigger, and just as I’d feared, the shot was wide. I lunged forward, wrested the pistol away, and tossed it close by the woman with dark hair.

  The skiff lurched then, throwing everyone in the vessel sideways. An earsplitting scraping sound erupted from the starboard side of the little ship. I turned around to see that Baxter’s shot had hit the pilot, who was now slumped over the controls.

  “Hold onto something!” I yelled out to no one in particular as the skiff rammed into something hard and completely unyielding. The impact tossed me forward. Logan yelled from somewhere in the wreckage and Baxter screamed, but I didn’t hear the woman. A loud pop sounded in the cabin, then flames and smoke erupted from the controls.

  The way was clear out of the hazy lower deck and I spotted the woman not far away, slumped over on the floor. I grabbed the emergency supply box and made my way over to her unconscious form then tossed her over one shoulder. The movement shifted the skiff and Baxter screamed again as we tipped hard to port. Logan stumbled up the stairs and I followed him out as the small craft teetered again. When we cleared the upper deck, I jumped down from the wreckage.

  After setting the woman down I went back in to see if anyone else could be helped. By far, the worst off was the pilot. Miraculously, the round in his back hadn’t killed him, but he was in rough shape. I probably hurt him, but it was impossible to be gentle when I pulled him free.

  Billowing smoke choked the air and flames licked up from the lower deck, barring me from going down. Baxter cried out from below, a high pitched, dying sound, and then he went quiet. Knowing he would be far beyond my help, I returned to the pilot.

  The man’s eyes fluttered open and he groaned. A large gash cut across his forehead and one of his legs was broken. Clean, white bone poked out from a hole in his pants and blood had soaked most of his shirt where the bullet had entered. He might have lived except for a large shard of the windshield that had pierced his chest, and I could tell from his labored breath it had punctured something vital.

  The emergency kit was still by the woman who was now struggling to sit up with her hands restrained behind her back. I rummaged through the bag and tossed her a laser knife so she could free herself, then continued to search for something to help the pilot.

  “It’s no use,” he mumbled.

  He wasn’t wrong. The kit would have helped to patch up the bullet wound, maybe even set the leg, but the glass had done too much damage. I did see a pain reducer and pocketed the injector. Instead of making promises I couldn’t keep, I set the bag aside and moved closer to him. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Can you tell us where we are?”

  The pilot coughed violently until blood dripped down his chin and his breath came in a rattle.

  “An hour out. North. Northwest. Hostage camp. So sorry,” he gasped.

  “I can give you a shot for the pain.” I pulled the injector out of my pocket and pressed it to the man’s arm.

  His body relaxed when the dose hit his bloodstream. A few minutes later he took one last rattling breath and was gone. It would have been good to know if Velio was working with the Sarkonian and Evelyn or if this was unrelated, but he couldn’t have given me anything else in his condition.

  A movement from my left side told me the woman had managed to free herself and was moving now.

  “You were knocked unconscious,” I told her. “Take it easy as you get up.”

  She raised a hand to the back of her head and grimaced. “I must have hit something when we crashed.”

  I nodded. “I’m Alphonse Malloy. You can call me Al. What’s your name?” I decided it was probably best to play it close to the vest that I recognized her. She hadn’t been at the meet, so I had to wonder how she’d ended up as a hostage in the same transport as me. Then it occurred to me that I hadn’t been in the warehouse either. The most likely scenario was that Evelyn had put all the buyers under surveillance and taken those close to them.

  “Marcella,” she said, hugging her bare arms and looking around. “Where are we?”

  “I’m not exactly sure. It sounded like we were going to be hostages. Do you know why?” I wanted to gauge how much she knew, but Marcella simply shrugged and shielded her face against the bright sunlight.

  She shook her head. “No idea. What do we do now?” With her face hidden, I couldn’t tell if she was being truthful or not, so I left it alone for the time being.

  “I’m going to see what we have option-wise.” Unable to do anything more for the pilot, I left his body and walked to the remains of the skiff. There wasn’t much left. What controls hadn’t burned up were smashed and had no power. The cabin was still on fire, and when it burned out there would be nothing left. Resigning myself, I returned to the ground and walked a little way up a hill.

  I went back to Marcella who was digging through pieces of the wreckage.

  When she saw me coming, she stopped and waited for me to come to her side. “What are we looking at?” she asked.

  “A long walk.”

  12

  She looked less concerned than I’d expected, though I assumed that to be from the shock. “What should we do, Al?”

  I regarded the question carefully. She was still a mystery and I needed to figure out how much she knew. Deciding to stick with the most obvious story until I could work out additional information, I came up with a statement that might evoke more of a response. “I’m fairly certain that those men who took us hostage worked for Ferris Velio.”

  She didn’t react to the name, nor did she respond.

  “I’ll break it down for you,” I continued. We’re stranded at the bottom of a ravine, probably miles from the nearest town. The smoke is going to make for a fairly good beacon to anyone nearby that cares to come looking. The bad news is that anyone likely to come looking will not be friendly.”

  Marcella moved briskly to pick up the emergency kit then came back. “I guess we’d better get going then,” she said.


  I held up a hand. “Let’s work out a plan first. Taking off into the desert half-cocked is liable to get us killed. We were close to wherever the kidnappers wanted to take us. If their allies show up, we will be grabbed again. Do you want to hunt for anything we can salvage or inventory the emergency supplies?”

  She shrugged. “I guess it doesn’t matter. I’ll see what’s lying around.”

  “Okay. If I can get a beacon or a radio to work, I can signal for some help.”

  She brightened at that and came out of the corner a bit. “You got a tracker past them?”

  I nodded evasively. “My Uncle Dorian will be able to activate it once he realizes I’m missing. He has a ship. He might even spot the smoke here. Still, we need to find some cover so we can pick who to interact with.”

  What I didn’t tell her was that all Constables were outfitted with subdermal trackers that could be activated from just about anywhere remotely. Dorian had probably already activated it and was headed my way.

  “Sounds good. Be back in a few,” said Marcella, then she marched off in search of more supplies.

  I watched her walk away for a few seconds and took stock of her clothing. Thankfully she wasn’t in the sort of fancy getup I’d last seen her in. Now she wore black pants, stylish but sturdy boots, and a white shirt. Satisfied, I turned my attention to the kit.

  It contained basic medical supplies, but they were mostly cheap, and I had a feeling that Baxter had packed it. There was no organization and the pain injection I’d given the pilot was the only medicine besides some analgesic. I also came up with the standard bandages, disinfecting spray, clotting powder, and a few solar blankets, though I doubted they’d be necessary.

  I pulled a few more things out and was pleased to find a light source, but the real treasure came in the form of water, which we were going to need in this heat, along with a holo compass. A few fuel bars, a short length of paracord, and MREs rounded out the cache.